SiteSecure is a video surveillance company that’s been in business since 2003. Since the company’s inception, it’s been an early adopter of IP technology, starting with NVRs (network video recorders) and IP encoders and, in 2007, choosing IP cameras over analog cameras. Ever since it started selling IP cameras, SiteSecure has sold Axis Communications products. “They were the first to market with outdoor, day/night, and surveillancegrade IP cameras,” says Craig Bowman, vice president of SiteSecure. “But, even though they were early adopters of this technology like our company was, the one thing that differentiates them from other products we’ve tested is their reliability. Even if another camera company offers a longer warranty, a reseller can’t remain profitable if it’s constantly changing out broken security cameras.”

SiteSecure uses its Gold Partner status with Axis Communications to its advantage as well. Jim Fairbanks, president of SiteSecure, says being a Goldlevel partner goes far beyond being able to purchase products at a better rate. “When we meet with consultants that are charged with making recommendations to their customers, they know that we’ve been selling this technology for several years and we have several Axis-certified technicians and engineers,” he says. “The reality is that getting certified requires partners to have expertise on not just the IP camera but the network, VMS [video management system], and video storage options.”

SiteSecure is a video surveillance solutions provider and consultant that deserves a lot of credit for being an early adopter of IP video technology, going back to its inception in 2003. However, two of the company’s vice presidents, Andy and Craig Bowman, are quick to point out that equally important to the company’s success was their more recent decision in 2012 to move Andy out of the role of president and to put Jim Fairbanks in that seat instead. “As a civil engineer, I have a certain skill set and enjoy working on projects, but I just don’t enjoy setting the company vision, handling personnel issues, and focusing on the big- picture items that Jim does,” says Andy.

After Fairbanks came on board with SiteSecure in 2012, he spent the first couple of months getting to know the employees, riding along to customer visits, and talking to some of SiteSecure’s key customers. Two primary changes followed:

Twenty percent of the workers were put into new positions. “Some people were in management positions only because they had been with the company so many years and not because they were qualified to be in their positions,” says Fairbanks. One manager, for example, who was a talented engineer and loved evaluating technology, was moved into an R&D role. “As a result of this change, we started a Center of Excellence, where three full-time employees are able to test new physical security equipment, stage products for field implementations, and conduct training,” says Fairbanks. “Since rolling out the Center of Excellence, our field deployment times have been cut in half.”

Second, the company started communicating its business goals. Prior to Fairbanks starting with SiteSecure, the company followed its parent company’s business philosophy of presenting very limited information about the company’s financials. “Employees need to be aware of these stats, and they need to be empowered to help the company grow,” says Fairbanks. In addition to communicating its financials, SiteSecure developed a program to incentivize account managers to improve customer service without putting too much emphasis on hard selling clients. “We came up with a pooled bonus among the account managers, which encourages commitment to our customers as well as teamwork,” says Fairbanks. “Since putting this program in place, our positive customer feedback has increased dramatically.”

To truly understand SiteSecure’s current success in the physical security space, it’s important to first understand a little bit about its roots. Following Sept. 11, 2001, Wharton-Smith, a large, privately held construction company that works with commercial and environmental agencies such as water and waste-water treatment plants, recognized that physical security was going to become a major focus for its customers. Wharton- Smith spun off SiteSecure in February 2003 with four employees, none of whom had experience in the security industry. Two of the original members, Vice President Craig Bowman and former President (more about the former part later) Andy Bowman, were civil engineers employed by Wharton-Smith. The two brothers, plus a field engineer and a salesperson, had enough combined knowledge to be dangerous. “We started out focusing exclusively on water and waste-water companies, which were mandated by the federal government to perform vulnerability assessments,” recalls Craig Bowman. “Each utility company had to conduct its own study and develop a plan to fix any problems. It initially looked like this was going to be a lucrative opportunity, but the initiative quickly lost funding and wasn’t mandated, which put us in a tough position.”

SiteSecure was forced to quickly diversify, which it was able to do by following its parent company’s other key markets, such as aviation (airports) and education (K-12). One notable difference with the company’s early days in security compared with many of its competitors was the fact that it recognized the advantages of IP technology.

The Advantages Of Early IP Adoption
One of SiteSecure’s early physical-security implementations was with Seminole County, FL, government. The agency had an underground fiber-network infrastructure in place, but not enough to accommodate all the video bandwidth it needed for a surveillance camera project it was planning. “The existing infrastructure would accommodate only eight cameras over two strands of fiber,” recalls Craig Bowman. “Using IP, on the other hand, would enable 150 cameras to use the same network.” Considering it was 2003, IP cameras weren’t nearly as advanced as they are today, which required SiteSecure to create a work-around. “We initially used analog video cameras connected to encoders, which converted the analog signal to IP,” says Andy Bowman. “Additionally, DVRs were uncommon, so we had to convert the signal back to analog for the video recorders.” SiteSecure began researching for ways to simplify its surveillance solution and came across a company called Genetec, which had a software-based NVR (network video recorder) product. “Not only did this product enable us to avoid the expense of installing a second converter [called a multiplexor], it enabled us to allow our customers to use their own hardware.” Unlike traditional DVRs, which were stand-alone boxes that had to be shipped to the manufacturer if they stopped working, the NVR software ran on the customers’ servers and could be serviced by their internal IT department or a networking VAR if there were any problems. This move resulted in another advantage that SiteSecure would learn about over the next few years — improved reliability. “Many of the traditional DVRs that our competitors were selling were placed in closets, closest to where the cable was mounted,” says Andy Bowman. “In this environment, DVRs would become clogged with dust, overheat, and fail. The only component we installed in wiring closets was the encoder, which doesn’t have any moving parts. Servers were always installed in designated areas with proper temperature and ventilation controls, which meant that our video surveillance solution had a much lower failure rate compared to what some of our competitors were installing.”

The Convergence Trend Presents A Temporary Hiccup
Within the first five years of SiteSecure’s inception, it set up its customers’ NVRs on separate networks from their primary IT networks. This gave the company a lot of room for error when installing software on its customers’ servers. “We didn’t need to be concerned with network security issues, and we didn’t need to worry about factors such as QoS [quality of service] and packet prioritization,” says Andy Bowman. Around 2008, however, things started to change as more and more companies realized the advantages of running voice, video, and data applications on the same network, a practice known as convergence. Andy and Craig recall the time when their lack of networking knowledge needed to be addressed. “The IT guys were starting to become much more involved with the video surveillance buying decision-making process,” recalls Craig. “After a couple of painful conversations, we admitted to one another that we can’t even speak the same language as these guys. We also realized that training an existing employee, which would have required taking a semester course at a community college and investing hundreds of hours into training and certifications, just wasn’t feasible.” In early 2009, SiteSecure hired a networking engineer who already had the IT knowledge and networking certifications to give SiteSecure the IT credibility it had been lacking.

A Long-Term IP Commitment Finally Pays Off
SiteSecure did not experience double-digit growth over the next three years between 2009 and 2012, but it did manage to remain profitable. “We saw a lot of competitors go out of business during this time, but our vertical market diversity and decision to open a second office in the Tampa, FL, area were key factors to our survival,” says Craig. “During this time we made the switch from selling analog video surveillance cameras to Axis Communications IP cameras, once we saw that IP camera video quality caught and actually surpassed analog cameras.” (See sidebar on page 6s for more info about Axis Communications.)

In 2012, SiteSecure made a big decision that played a key role in moving the company from survival mode to profitability. In a hiring move rarely seen, Andy Bowman hired Jim Fairbanks as his replacement as president of the company, and he took a subordinate role as vice president. “My brother Craig and I are engineers at heart who like to be involved in the day-to-day projects more than the other essential decisions that go along with running a business,” says Andy. “Jim’s entrepreneurial personality allowed us to make some key changes that were long overdue and helped us get back on the double-digit growth path once again.” (See the sidebar “2 Ways The Right Leader Can Help Your Profitability” below.)

SiteSecure is already seeing positive results from its commitment to IP technology and its leadership change. “We’re finally reaching the tipping point where more customers are specifying IP technology in their RFPs,” says Andy. “Even though there are video surveillance companies that have been around longer than our company, it’s rare to find another company with as much IP experience as we have, which is another differentiator. Equally important to our technology expertise is our focus on three core beliefs: 1. Take care of the customer, 2. Take care of your coworkers, and 3. If we follow steps 1 and 2, we will work out everything else.”